


Nothing Beside Remains

by ladyvoldything



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Dragon Age II Quest - All That Remains Spoilers, Gen, Grey Wardens need bereavement time off, Grief/Mourning, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, author dealing with personal issues, get this out of me, the comte de launcet is scandalized
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 11:44:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20852891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyvoldything/pseuds/ladyvoldything
Summary: Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away.Grief doesn't go neatly, or in order. It isn't appropriate or polite. More than just an emotion, it's a condition- resurfacing, lying dormant, triggered by the strangest things. Hawke isn't doing his best, because "best" doesn't exist. Just the cold, inescapable reality of a world without his mother in it.





	Nothing Beside Remains

Hawke is quiet, until he's not. 

Hawke never shuts up. No matter the gravity or delicacy of the thing, there was never a situation he didn't have a quip or pithy remark for. Even in moments when silence would have served, he felt the need to say _something._ In truth, there were times he didn't know what to do with himself without it. Talking was never really optional- he just had to choose what to say. 

Always. Always sympathy or anger or threats or jokes or wit or bald-faced lies. The eternal deflections of anything resembling proper emotion. Keep it back, keep it back, bottle it good and cork it tight. Put it in the wine cellar with the others and only take them out to dust off and admire once a year. With any luck, he could make it through his prime without ever really uncorking those old, vintage hurts. There were so many, and they gathered dust so nicely inside him. 

Not all hurt flowed like wine: dark and red down drooling chins, poured neatly into bottles, rich and complex but unchanging. Some hurts had a gravity and motion all their own, festering if not given immediate attention, reactive to the slightest things. His older losses, the older bottles in his cellar, they were plentiful- they were fear and secrecy and Father, they were Blight and brother, they were strong and deep and left stains. But stains could be ripped up. This newest hurt- it was different. Uniquely horrible, and isolating him in a way that left him vulnerable to be jostled. 

The hours and days following Leandra's death were quiet-but-loud. The world moved busy around him while he, Garrett Hawke, slowly iced over, silent and stone-still. While he went through the motions, the horror fizzed and roiled inside him, ready to pop its cork. He blinked slowly at people apologizing for his loss, bringing food, imperiously sharing boring stories from a noble childhood she fled. He sat in his chair saying nothing to anyone for the entirety of a very awkward visit from a Qunari messenger dropping words like "basalit-an" and "tamassran," and didn't even react to the Qunari's brief argument with Fenris about the distinction between that and "mother." 

Even Knight-Captain Cullen, one of his least favorite people in the Free Marches, dropped by to give his regards. A tense thing, all awkwardly expressed sympathy for his loss and he understands, Serah, the horror of losing loved ones to magic-

Hawke didn't look up when Aveline and Sebastian very firmly marched the Templar out the door. 

Thoughts and memories and feelings beat at fogged windows like moths against glass, trying in vain to make themselves heard. Garrett didn't want to hear it. Didn't want to examine why an Orlesian comtess in a veil made him twitch- why he looked at her and lowly told her to _take it off._ A delivery girl wore a choker around her neck- the same spot as grotesque stitches, so he left the room and sat on the floor with Ox's big head in his lap. What a blessing, someone said. That mage friend of yours, keeping her preserved for the cremation. Talking about her. Gathering. Look, they washed her face, oh she has that high-collar dress she loved so much. You can't even tell. She looks perfect. He got up and left. 

No, he didn't want to _sit with her._ That thing on a slab wasn't _her_. It was meat and bone and Fade gristle. It was empty.

Around him, the world moved. The things around him changed, the clothes on him, the- he must have been moving, too. The evidence suggested he moved. One foot in front of the other, food slowly vanishing from his plate and his stomach not hurting anymore, couch to bed to kitchen to chair. The world moved, and he quietly through it. Around him, Gamlen had terse conversations with nobles and hurled abuse at a frazzled Grey Warden messenger (explaining the logistics of Bethany's situation). Around him, a gathering was planned. A pyre, a memorial, a procession for the Lady Amell and her surviving son, the new Lord Hawke of the Amell Estate. Details and plans formed with him at the center. Somehow these things happened, but Hawke had no part in them. 

His legs and arms moved, his head sometimes nodded or shook, but the memorial gathering was cremation and burial both: Leandra to the ashes, Garrett entombed in himself. Let it wash around him. Trite words. 

He was quiet. 

People noticed. Concerned looks, little whispers, sneaky shushing when he entered the room so he wouldn't hear. A low, _All right, Hawke?_ or _hey, sweet thing._

It was fine. Fine. The world was quiet. The world was still and silent and dull, gray where the color drained from it, quiet where something vital was gone. Missing a pillar meant to hold up the world, but nothing was crumbling yet. Hawke took breaths, and he was quiet. 

Nobody seemed to know what to say. Ever. Eventually, someone new came over to try- a tiny hand touching his shoulder delicately, and a tentative, "It was a beautiful thing, really." Merrill's eyes were wide and earnest. "Not many people get to complete the circle like that. She was there when you were born." 

He blinked.

Complete the circle. 

He looked at her. 

_Beautiful._

"Fuck you," he spat viciously, drawing stares from every person in the room. Merrill snatched her hand away like she'd been burned, and Hawke (all six-foot-six of him) surged from his chair, the pressure bursting from his chest in a fountain of pain and fury. "There was NOTHING _beautiful_ about watching her choke on her own tongue."

Someone made noise around them- several someones, and Hawke rounded on one of them at random. "Oh, what's your problem?" he snapped at an upset guest. "Sorry, did I ruin your appetite for the canapés? Who the fuck gave you the right to eat canapés, anyway? Any of you? You just- you come into my fucking house, eating food and- and- acting normal, talking about _oh, my daughter had her baby_\- FUCK your daughter," he yelled, rounding on a stunned-looking older man. "And fuck her stupid baby! You don't get to just come in here living your lives and pretend that it's _okay!"_

Everything got blurry after that. Bile rose in his gut and heat surged to his fingertips and everything burst into movement as dizzying as the quiet had been sedating. Noise, movement, whipping like fight or fear. Combat but disordered. No plan, no moves, no executed training and honed instincts. The flailing of an animal and the rage of a drunkard and- 

"Everyone out! Get _OUT."_

The door cracked when he slammed it. His friends stood circled around the edges of the room, staring uncertainly at the mountain of a man storming through the house. Merrill looked like she was about to cry from that hateful beginning of his outburst. Anders made a move to follow him, but Aveline caught his arm and shook her head. The guard captain was so familiar with grief's wild tempest- nobody needed to intervene just now. 

Hawke waited for Ox to follow him into his bedroom before slamming the door viciously. When he came to, half the furniture was destroyed and Ox had teeth sunk into the thick leather of his sleeve, stopping Hawke from snapping a bed post in half. 

His puppet strings snapped. He collapsed in a heap on top of Ox, and didn't move until morning.

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to get this out of me. This will be updated sporadically, when something happens IRL to trigger it. 
> 
> Not beta-read, nor will it be.


End file.
